“Are we fighting?”
Cooper turned and headed into the back of the store. Adam chased after him, moving quicker than he thought possible considering his bones felt like glass. He followed Cooper into the stock room and closed the door behind him, locking them in the small space together. Just them and their feelings. Nothing and no one else mattered. Adam would prove it.
“I meant everything I said last night,” Cooper repeated. “I want to be with you as long as we can be together. That doesn’t have anything to do with involving the courts.”
“Why not?”
“We’ve barely gotten the right to get married.” Cooper threw his hands up in exasperation. “And to be quite honest, Adam, I don’t trust the government to not take it away. I don’t want them to have that kind of power over my happiness.”
“Making gay marriage illegal again wouldn’t invalidate the commitment.”
“Then why does the paper matter?” Cooper asked, cheeks turning red. “If the court can’t take it away, why should they be able to grant it?”
“You’re missing the point!”
“You’re blind.” Cooper pivoted and turned his back to Adam, bracing himself on one of the shelves, his shoulders hunched.
Adam went to him and pressed his chest against Cooper’s back, wrapping his arms around his body and resting his cheek against his shoulder blade.
“It means something to me,” he whispered, flexing his fingers against Cooper’s chest. “And I meant it when I told you before I was all in with you. What’s more all in than this? I’m offering you my name, Cooper.”
“Even if we did get married,” Cooper mumbled, “who says I would take your name?”
“Cooper Yates sounds better than Adam Hendricks.”
Cooper wiggled underneath him and turned, standing straight and searching out Adam’s insistent stare. Adam fisted the bottom of Cooper’s shirt in his hands, holding him steady and in place.
“That’s your opinion.”
Cooper closed his eyes, leaning his weight back against the racks behind him.
“I’ve never pictured my life this way,” Cooper whispered, eyes closed beneath the lenses of his glasses.
“I never pictured my life this way, either,” Adam reminded him. “I thought I knew who I was. What I wanted. And then you came around and flipped everything on its head. Now I kneel for you. I crawl for you…I beg for you.”
“Adam.”
“I come to you when I need reassurance, and I come to you when I am lonely. Because I love you, because you’re my partner. You’ve asked nothing of me besides my commitment and you have it, Cooper. You have it.”
“I know.” Cooper petted his hand down Adam’s sternum. “And you have mine, but…I need to think about it.”
Adam wouldn’t leave. He knew in his heart that by going all in with Cooper, he’d made the kind of commitment he was asking for in return. But he also wouldn’t push. Pushing was what had broken them up and forced them into ten years of separation and silence. Adam wouldn’t let another misalignment of priorities drive them to the same outcome. He’d said what he had to say. He’d let Cooper know where he was at and what he wanted. Just like Cooper had done to him, a lifetime before.
“We have time,” he whispered, leaning close so his lips hovered inches from Cooper’s parted mouth. “We have all the time in the world, I promise you that.”
Chapter24
Cooper
The elevator plummeted from the penthouse to the ground floor with such a rapid acceleration, Cooper didn’t even have time to scream. Milliseconds before the elevator cab crashed into the concrete foundation of the building, Cooper woke up. He jolted upright in bed, sucking in a loud and desperate breath. Sweat slicked down his temples and forehead. His hair stuck out from his head in some spots while remaining firmly in place in others.
Cooper rubbed a circle over his chest, glanced at the empty pillow beside him, and then at the clock. It was almost nine, and he must have slept through Adam getting up and leaving for work. With a trembling breath, he slid back down onto his wet pillow and sighed.
“Get it together,” he pep-talked to himself.
It wasn’t a stretch to understand the subconscious meaning of his dream, and with another frustrated breath, he forced his eyes back open. The ceiling fan above his bed spun in a circle, the pull cord clinking quietly against one of the light covers.
“You love him,” he told himself. “It’s not a scary thing. It’s just a whatever thing.”
